Findings

Analyses of Existing EV Pilots in NWE

The overall objective of the fourth work package, led by AutomotiveNL is to support an accelerated implementation and development of sustainable e-mobility in North West Europe by mapping and take lessons from the wealth of existing EV pilots in NWE.

Isolated Pilots

During the last number of years, regional and national authorities have spent tens of millions of Euros on implementing e-mobility by means of pilot initiatives. These pilots took on many forms and included a range of different vehicle types from bikes to busses. Unfortunately, the operators of these pilots tended to work in “splendid isolation”, which meant that even though the various regions and cities planned to become well known pioneers for the use of e-mobility technology, the majority of their programmes were stand-alone. Almost no information was shared between the different pilots and policy makers and this resulted in a limitation of the awareness of relevant developments.

4 benchmark pilots

In order to prevent stakeholders in the emobility industry from duplicating results and trying to solve the same problems in isolation, we have chosen to study four pilots from different regions within North West Europe. This ensures that everyone who is involved with the planning and implementation of new initiatives regarding the testing and use of EV’s in pilots can learn lessons from the results of work that has already been completed. This is an important outcome from the ENEVATE project as it facilitates by reducing the amount of wasted resources. The ENEVATE Work Package 4 team visited, interviewed and analyzed pilots in Montbeliard (F), Newcastle (UK), Dublin (IR) and ‘s Hertogenbosch (NL). All these pilots were in the before mentioned second stage of a pilot.

These four pilots gave insight into designing, planning, implementing and evaluating a pilot project. Besides that the pilot owners communicated openly and honestly regarding their goals, risks, challenges and lessons learned. In order to gain a perception of their position, a second group of pilots was used to compare results with the initial group. The project team and other involved stakeholders visited 22 different pilots within the NWE region.

Inform new Pilots

The end document intends to inform planners, stakeholders and policy makers in how to develop an e-mobility pilot project from the beginning. The therefore important aspects are discussed. In the document readers will also find the key questions that stakeholder, who are planning a project, must be able to answer.

Commercial viable Pilots

After the first few years of stand-alone regional pilots, North West Europe (NWE) became renown on an international stage and was looked upon as a region which was ready to step into the new phase. The new pilots that were set up needed to be aware of the developments that had been achieved in the previous years, for instance, some of the previously run pilot projects had transformed into working business models and were commercial by viable. If the recommendations and results are adapted into new pilots, thiswill lead, at this stage of introduction of electric mobility, to an increase of NWE potentials.

Start of two new phase 3 Pilots

In 2013 two subprojects within this Work Package are worked out. At first a dedicated team researched in collaboration with the province of Brabant the possibilities to combine electric mobility with the leisure industry in Brabant. In the beginning the recreational routes are reviewed for electric vehicles, what are the opportunities/ possibilities of the infrastructure. Then the routes were combined with places to eat, sleep or experience the environment and to load at the same time. This evoluted into a province wide car scheme, EV’s are used as event taxis, delivering packages, rental options by theme parks etcetera. All this vehicles are in the same pool with the same look, but the specific advertisement and usage is different.

This fulfils the business case. The vehicle and charging poles don’t have a single purposebut are combined in all different settings. This various settings together make a viable business case and promote the province at the same time, due to the promotional/ advertising appearance of the vehicles. This project is still growing together with local and national companies, different cities and provinces. The second subproject contains a feasibility study in order to investigate the possibilities for the implementation of an e-car sharing (and/or new mobility solutions) in the area of Southern Limburg and to identify the conditions that should be considered.

The result is a written feasibility study, whichwill describe and highlight the feasibility of an e–car sharing program in the southern part of Limburg. If feasible, this study will be or can become available as research documentation in order to take next steps for the implementation of an e-car sharing program with interested parties.

PILOT DESCRIPTIONS

Montbeliard - France

“AH! La Carte” is a local, public sharing scheme which aims at delivering an integratedsystem of mobility services within the Montbeliard Metropole region, in Franche- Comté, France. The pilot is operated by a contractor on behalf of Pays de Montbéliard Agglomération. This pilot ran for one year and provided the general public with the possibility of using a vehicle sharing scheme which included electric vehicles, bicycles and public transport. The access and payment methods of all modes of transport for this pilot were consolidated into one unique smartcard.

Newcastle - England

2009 saw the commencement of two importantpilot projects in Newcastle, Sunderland and Middlesbrough which are located in the North East of England, United Kingdom.These were called EVADINE and “Plugged in Places”. The pilots involved the monitoring of 44 electric vehicles over a six month period. Key information from this included information collected on driver behaviours and acceptance. This project also included development and support of the on-going growth of an integrated charging infrastructure within the region, which ranged from domestic to rapid chargers. The Plugged in Places project started in 2009 with a goal of installing 1,300 charging points until 2013, especially in highly populated areas. This pilot also created a back office and EV user database called “Charge Your Car”.

Dublin - Ireland

In July 2010, the Electricity Supply Board(ESB) of Ireland purchased 15 Mitsubishi iMiEV electric vehicles in order to start an electric vehicle trialling programme thatneeded to last for two years. The trial participants included both ESB staff membersand a number of selected users from the public. The electric vehicles were fitted withdata logging devices and GPS tracking unitsin order to gain as much real-time usage data as possible. Trinity College Dublin isanalysing the technical data and completing a customer behavioural study. The goal of thetrial process is to obtain a more comprehensiveunderstanding of the technical aspects of electric vehicle driving and charging patterns along with consumer acceptance and behaviour.

‘s Hertogenbosch - Netherlands

Situated in the North Brabant region of theNetherlands, ‘s Hertogenbosch started a project in the inner city that aimed to reduce traffic by promoting the use of bicycles andpublic transport. This would allow an increase of the effectiveness of the local transportation system while reducing emissions. As a result, several sub-projects started to use electric vehicles. An EV bus that was able to charge with a conductive charging method built into bus stops was introduced. Meanwhile, another smaller electric bus was introduced at the same time to set an example that EV’s are viable. This was just one of a number of pilots that have been successful in this region.